We are nothing. Mankind is all. By the
grace of our brothers are we allowed our lives. We exist
through, by and for our brothers who are the State.
Amen.

But Equality 7-2521 has a problem; he doesn't believe in the things
that his brothers do. He has questions, which can not even be asked,
that he wants answered. He has a friend (International 4-8818), which
is forbidden, and then he falls in love with a woman he calls "The Golden
One" (Liberty 5-3000). And as if all these crimes weren't bad enough,
he's started to do experiments in an abandoned culvert and he's figured
out electricity. But he's willing to accept the consequences for
his crimes because he's certain that his discovery is so important to Mankind
as to absolve him of all blame. He is, of course, wrong. Because
in this society, it is not a good thing for an individual to discover new
knowledge: "This is a great sin, to be born with a head which is too quick.
It is not good to be different from our brothers, but it is evil to be
superior to them." So Equality 7-2521 and Liberty 5-3000 escape into
the wilderness surrounding the city and, after renaming each other Prometheus
and Gaea, begin to work out a philosophy where the self, the individual,
is important. Prometheus realizes:

At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But
he broke the chains. Then he was enslaved by the
kings. But he broke their chains. He
was enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race. But he
broke their chains. He declared to all his
brothers that a man has rights which neither god nor king
nor other men can take away from him, no matter
what their number, for his is the right of man,
and there is no right on earth above this right.
And he stood on the threshold of freedom for which
the blood of centuries behind him had been spilled.

But then he gave up all he had won, and fell lower
than his savage beginning.

What brought it to pass? What disaster took
their reason away from men? What whip lashed them
to their knees in shame and submission? The
worship of the word "We."

...

Perhaps in those days, there were a few among men,
a few of clear sight and clean soul, who
refused to surrender [the word I.] What agony
must have been theirs before that which they saw
coming and could not stop! Perhaps they cried
out in protest and in warning. And they, these few,
fought a hopeless battle, and they perished with
their banner smeared by their own blood. And they
chose to perish, for they knew. To them, I
send my salute across the centuries, and my pity.

Theirs is the banner in my hand. And I wish
I had the power to tell them that the despair of their
hearts was not to be final, and their night was
not without hope. For the battle they lost can never
be lost. For that which they died to save
can never perish. Through all the darkness, through all
the shame of which men are capable, the spirit of
man will remain alive on this earth. It may sleep,
but it will awaken. It may wear chains, but
it will go on. Man, not men.

Ayn Rand espoused a hard line capitalist philosophy which she called
Objectivism--'the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness
as the moral purpose of life, with productive achievement as his noblest
activity and reason as his only absolute.' During a period of years
when one type of Collectivism or another (Socialism, Fascism, Communism)
was regnant in virtually every nation in the West, she courageously swam
against the tide of her time and demanded recognition of the primacy of
the individual and of self interest as a force for good. As a result,
she has been ignored by the arts establishment, by philosophers and by
political scientists, but she has a strong cult following and nearly every
young person has, at least, a flirtation with her ideas. There are
legions of us who first read her in college and developed a ferocious intellectual
crush on her for her iconoclasm and for the pure ferocity of her rhetoric.
Here, at last, was someone telling us that the liberal pabulum we had been
spoon fed for the first 18 years of life was moral poison. What a
glorious moment when you discover that there are other people who, like
you, think that individuals matter, that personal excellence should be
celebrated, that anything that limits the rights and the abilities of individuals
is evil.

One of the most telling indicators of the dichotomy between critics
and the common folk is to compare her absence from the Modern Library Top
100 novels of the 20th Century list to the lofty placement of her novels
on the lists where readers voted (i.e., Radcliffe's
100 Best Novels,Modern
Library Readers' List & Koen
Books Top 100) The critics may not respect
her much, but we of the hoi polloi sure seem to like her. And, of
course, Ms Rand has gotten the final laugh as it is her philosophy that
has triumphed and, along with the careful tending of her acolyte and former
boy toy Alan Greenspan, given the world a period of unprecedented economic
growth and political freedom. The continued refusal of the intelligentsia
to acknowledge her, merely serves to make her accomplishment all the more
remarkable. When the dust has settled, a few decades or centuries
from now, one assumes (okay, one hopes) that Keynes and Galbraith, Marx
and Rawls, Dreiser and Lewis and Sinclair--all of the thinkers and writers
of the failed Left--will have been consigned to oblivion and the names
that are honored will be Hayek, Popper, Friedman, Orwell and Rand.
.

The sheer length of her two masterworks, The
Fountainhead and Atlas
Shrugged, makes rereading them a pretty daunting prospect. They
tend to be a little too hysterical, a little too repetitive and, with the
end of the Cold War, they've lost a little of their edge. But her essential message is still as important and timely today
as it was fifty years ago--freedom and human progress requires that the State stand back and allow the individual to act in his own interest. Every
attempt to make one person work for another's benefit erodes all of our
liberty and retards our progress as a society and a species -- charity needs to come about as a function of faith, not government mandate. So I
highly recommend that you return to these shorter works and The Fountainhead
stands up pretty well. It also looks, from the reviews below, like
her collected letters and journals make for rewarding reading. This
fine short novel is an excellent introduction to her passionate political
philosophy and her emotional polemical style.

Comments:

Whoa. Interesting comments... Ayn Rand called Anthem her poem; after growing up in Russia, she felt compelled to convey this idea via the clearest, simplest, most concise form for obvious reasons. The Fountainhead & Atlas Shrugged are more complex, if that's what you're looking for, both in plot & in language.

I'm uncertain about the "Christian" comments. While it is true that Ayn Rand was an atheist (for much of her life, any way), the idea that those who choose not to work shouldn't be fed is quite biblical (ever read Timothy I & II?). That is not the point, however. Rand is simply pointing out that the generally accepted concept of "altruism" is false: explore The Fountainhead & the Virtue of Selfishness and learn for yourself how truly selfish altruism usually is. And, finally, charity should be simply that: an act of charity from the heart -- not government enforced altruism via taxation.

- Quincy

- Nov-24-2008, 19:26

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Ayn Rand was a real See You Next Tuesday. A mediocre writer with a disgusting inhuman parody of capitalism (which I have few qualms with actually) as her philosophy. As Christians I have no idea how you guys could advocate a philosophy which basically operates on the idea that you shouldn't bother to give a crap about other human beings. But, doing that would be "bleeding heart" and "liberal" and besides, who wants to give money to the poor? They don't WORK like YOU and ME!

- Kurdt Kobain

- Jan-11-2007, 09:53

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Rand writes in a shrill monotone, a lot like an automobile horn being pushed by the skull of some unconscious crash victim. A comatose state...sort of describes most "Objectivists" I've met.

- Jon Grena

- Oct-22-2006, 06:33

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Archereon you're a Toohey follower if there ever was one.

- Mike Moriarty

- Jun-07-2005, 17:47

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I read Anthem and I thought that she wrote the story very well. Also I think that she ment not to give Prometheus a lot of charistics to make her point on how controled the society was.

- Rachael

- Feb-28-2005, 16:33

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Okay, so I read anthem wanting an introduction to Ayn Rand and this was the first book I found. I found no real character development, an okay flow, but being an avid reader, it fell somewhat flat and uninspiring. I have also come to the conclusion from reading up on objectivism, and Ayn Rand, really who names herelf after a typewriter, that Karl Marx was a much more intellegent person than Ms Rand, E for effort